


The Soldiers at Canary Wharf

by Davechicken



Category: Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 12:19:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2621423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once you've been on an adventure, you are forever changed. The Marquis is forever dragging Door and Richard off on just one more trip. After all, who better to help him curry favours?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Soldiers at Canary Wharf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/gifts).



His fingers were intoxicating. Even after all these years, Richard couldn't help but be drawn by the way they moved: a dancing, a shifting, a wave of digits rising and falling. Like a weaver working over a loom. Like a magician, casting spells... only Richard knew, now, that it was the point. The showy facade was there to pull your eye, so you didn't see the trickster relieve you of your wares, or worse.

Right now, the Marquis was defying the laws of physics again. He had a large, silver coin that ran over his hands like a mouse. He would turn it once, and it would show heads. Twice, and it would show heads again. Thrice, and it was tails. One more revolution began the process again. He didn't need to ask, because he knew he'd never be told. Instead, he let the man take his delight in the hypnosis, but he kept his _wares_ , his _goods_ , his _worse_ close.

"Aren't you going to ask me who sent me here?" the Marquis suggested, and although his coyote smile was beguiling, there was an undercurrent of _please, please ask me_. After all, a showman was nothing without his audience.

"I figured you'd get to it in time," Richard replied. "It has to be something _important_ , or you wouldn't be so damn pleased about it."

"Spoil-sport," the Marquis complained, and the coin was behind his ear, but then it wasn't, and now it was a slip of paper.

Richard snatched at the paper, and the Marquis was back to grinning again. If he ever lost his teeth, the man's face would fall apart, he was sure. "This is..." he squinted, turning the paper to one side, frowning at it.

"No, like this," de Carabas chided, plucking the paper loose, and putting it back the right way around again. 

"I see."

"Do you?"

"Not really."

A tap against the back of the paper. "Sub lieutenant." The next. "Lieutenant. Commander. _Captain_."

"I see," Richard said again, and he sort of did. Lines, and a circle. He'd never been all that into military things when he'd been a member of 'normal' society. He was aware that soldiers existed, and that they had ranks, and that the Americans pronounced it in-lieu-of, and that the Scottish pronounced it left-not-right-of. "So, is someone forming a militia? Are we about to be invaded?"

The paper was snatched back, and squirreled away somewhere before he could blink. "It's a mystery."

"A mystery. What is?"

"My boy, that's what a mystery _is_. It's that it's... not."

Richard Oliver Mayhew tried very hard not to roll his eyes. "So why have you come to me?"

"To find the missing Lieutenants, Commander, and Captain."

"And what's in it for me?"

"Oh, adventure! Intrigue! Mystery! Women! Men! Women-men and men-women!" His eyes had that glitter, now, the one that was so very, very appealing. "And for me... a favour. A very, very _big_ favour from the Aldwych."

"The Old Witch?"

"No... the _Aldwych_."

It was a foregone conclusion, really. Not so much for the women, men, women-men and men-women, so much as for the... thrill. They had played this game several times over the years: the Marquis with his terrible problems that needed a _hero_ , Richard with his fake-begrudging acceptance, Door with her long-suffering 'my boys are at it again' (but secretly pleased to relive days of yore), a chase through somewhere busy and deadly and the inevitable saving of (insert troubled thing here). Richard knew he would say yes, and so did the Marquis.

"Are you going to ask mummy if you can come play?"

"I'm not his mother," Door said, appearing as if from nowhere. Richard had become inured to it.

"Well, then, his keeper. What do you say, my good Lady?"

Richard was right there. Literally right there. But they talked over his head like he was a car to be loaned out, or a toy to be shared between grubby hands. In a sense, he supposed he was. He folded his arms over his chest and let the two of them fight it out.

It was fine. He was going, and they all knew it. Still, everywhere had their protocols, their rules of etiquette. And he loved to listen to the two of them bicker, he always had.

***

So there they were, the three of them, again. Not that they needed to. Not that Door should be accompanying them, but they had long ago ceased to worry about 'should' in favour of 'could'.

It reminded Richard of the Old Days. Back when he still clung to some faint hope of fuzzy, artificial hair on trolls, rather than the real thing. (The real thing was unpleasantly smelly, and farted too much.) The only thing missing was... well. He tried not to think about Hunter that often, but it was difficult not to. There was a gap in the world where once she'd been, and sometimes he could hear her footsteps in the distance, or feel her breath on his neck. He missed her, too. He missed everyone he lost.

Door and her Marquis traded half-veiled insults back and forth like a volley of fire, and he let their words wash over him. Right now, it was on the topic of their _last_ adventure, which hard turned out to not be an adventure at all, so much as an extended shopping trip with minor dragon-breath-encounter, and who currently owed _whom_ a favour. Not that he was counting, or anything, but Richard thought he was the one with the most positive marks on the tab.

"Why didn't the Aldwych come to me?" Door asked.

"My Lady, you know why."

Door was pouting. It was not good when Door pouted. Although it was ridiculously adorable when she did.

"Do we even know where we're going?" Richard asked. "Or are we just going to wander around in the vague hope we'll see soldiers?"

"Soldiers?" de Carabas said, scornfully. "They're not soldiers. They're _sea-men_." 

Which, of course, had probably been queued up for days. He always took every possible opportunity to put an innuendo into everything he said. Even thinking that, Richard could hear the 'into everything' as yet another twist of words. He'd seen de Carabas make plenty of moves on every gender, species, or persuasion, but the man's deep and abiding love-affair would only ever be with himself. He'd wondered, at one point, if the man truly did hold some kind of twisted love for Door, but he doubted she would ever act on it.

"So, these sea-men," Door went on, "...do we have any indication where they are? Or went? Or came from?"

"I thought I asked that," Richard grumbled.

"Well, the Aldwytch said they were a delegation from the people in the sky," de Carabas explained. "That they had come to see her, and they were here to foster good relations between our people."

"In the sky?" Richard repeated.

Dark eyes narrowed at him, but they had long since had the fight about echoing everything. "Yes. The Land in the Clouds. They have long been separated from us, but this forward detachment were to put up lines of commerce and conversation. Of camaraderie and conviviality."

"And they didn't come through me?" Door asked, sounding - frankly - miffed.

"I believe they were en-route to see you, when whatever befell them... befell."

"Where did they go missing?" Richard asked, for the umpteenth time.

"Canary Wharf."

Which made Door roll her eyes, and Richard stifle a grin. The pretty singing bird-chorus was a hot topic of conversation at times. _New-blood_ , he'd heard, and _wet-ink_ and it made him secretly proud that he'd somehow slid out of that and into real Below. He was no longer the outsider, not really.

"This better be worth the trip, de Carabas," Door said.

***

Of course, it fell to Richard to speak to the Canary. The Marquis claimed extenuating circumstances, and Door didn't even bother with an excuse, just shoved. He didn't protest, and now he was sitting on a human-sized perch. He could not see any singing birds.

"So..."

"You came to find the men, the zebra-men, the men who hide!"

It was eerie, it was. The voices came from all over, tinkling like bells. He couldn't see where from, so he swung his legs back and forth, like a child in a playground. He remembered that, suddenly. The orange plastic of the seat, with holes for your legs, and gaps in the rubber where fingers had pricked and cigarettes had been stubbed out. He remembered wondering idly what would happen if you swung hard enough: would you go all the way over the top? Was it possible, or would you always fall back down? And he remembered when your legs got too big for the holes, and like a rebel you _stood up_. And then he'd forgotten about swings, and how it felt when you almost escaped gravity, to be tugged back down, until now.

"I came to find the sailors," he said. "The delegation from the Land of Clouds."

"And you thought to ask the birds?"

"Actually, I was told to ask the birds. It's nothing personal. It's not like I'm being racist, or anything. It's just that I was told they came here, first." 

Back and forth, back and forth. The chain made a strange creaking, groaning noise. He wondered if it could hold his weight, but the fall would only hurt his pride if not.

"They are not zebras, they hide, they hide. The stripes are camouflage, but tiger-bite, tiger-bright!"

Wasn't that a poem? "So you've seen them?"

"Saw them, walking, in a line. In a line, ready to fall."

"When did you see them?"

"Days, days, days," the voices giggled. "But only when there's juice."

"And did you see where they went?"

"The holes have them." The voices changed, now. A chatter under the words, like teeth clashing together, but not. "The holes. The gaps. Mind the gaps. Not those gaps. Black, they are. Black like lack, black like _void_."

"And where are the holes? Did they fall in? Can we get them out?"

There was a shrieking, then, a rush of wind and a profound feeling of unhappiness. "Fallen! Fallen and can't get up! Broken wings! Can't fly out! Darkness! Darkness! Darkness!"

And no matter what he tried, that was all he could get from them.

***

"So we need to find a 'hole'. Or 'holes'."

"You don't find holes, my dear Richard," de Carabas said, putting a cuffed hand on his shoulder.

"In my experience you do. Sometimes only when you fall into them."

"You don't find the _holes_ , you find the environs, the places around them, the things. Gaps cannot be located, except by their edges."

"Which is the same as--"

Fingers pressed his lips together, and then squished. Richard felt something like a duck, and he stuck his tongue out with some force and licked. He'd long since become used to physical contact from both of them.

"It's hard to open a door to a non-place," Door mused. "Which is strange, because doors cover non-places all the time. They're gaps, covered with hinges and wood. Or metal."

The Marquis let go just in time for Richard to not-say that he knew very well what doors were, thank you. Instead he rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. 

"I have other people I can ask..." the Marquis said.

"Couldn't you have done that before you came to us?" Richard replied.

"Yes."

But he hadn't.

***

This was an excuse to go to the Market. Of course it was. Richard saw through it as easily as you saw through glass that was pretty much clean and clear, and had no ornamentation hanging in it. Just frilly curtains and a pelmet. That was the word, wasn't it? For the fringe around the top. _Pelmet_... like helmet. 

The Marquis and Door waltzed through the Market like they were born to it. Which, in a sense, they were. Richard walked through like a man who was not so much born to it, but had become inured to the trips there, and pretended it was offensive and boring, but secretly rather liked it.

It was that time of year again. The time of year when the air was rich with cinnamon, orange, pine and cloves. They split up inside, mostly because the Marquis had seen someone who owed him a favour, and because Door had seen something that caught her eye. The unofficial reason was because they were less imposing on their own, and they could gather more information.

Richard stood back from the crowd, listening to the rumblings of the _Above_ , the momentary shakes in reality. There was a woman who looked like she'd seen the Blitz (and perhaps she had) trying to hawk her wares. Her back was bent almost in half, her hands stealing in and out of her cuffs as she traded things back and forth. She might know something.

"You're not shopping," came a voice somewhere down and to the left. 

Richard glanced, and saw a young boy there. He was dressed like a chimney sweep, but that could have just been fashion down here. "I am. But not for pastries or trinkets."

"Information, then?"

He nodded. He'd learned - after a very long training period - that people came to you, if you looked like you could pay. Speak softly and carry a large candy cane.

"I'm looking for what's not there. For some people who came, and went missing. Sound like something you know?"

"Lots of people go missing, mister."

"Not all of them are _sailors_."

"Ah." The young child wriggled. "I see. You really want to go find them?"

"I do."

A small, grubby palm came out. Richard placed payment into it, and closed the boy's fingers around it. 

"Get your friends and follow me."

***

_May you live in interesting times_ , went the curse. And Richard understood it. Oh, he did. One day he'd been in _boring_ times. Utterly mundane. Grind after grind, day after day. He'd woken up, snoozed the alarm, woken up again, showered, shaved, dressed, eaten, staggered out into the noise and the light, crowded between elbows and handbags, sat in a small square of real-estate, moved imaginary 1s and 0s on a flickering screen, eaten again, smiled (falsely), more elbows and handbags, yet more food, another flickering screen, bed. If he was lucky, there'd be an interlocking of parts. If he was unlucky, there'd be an interlocking of parts. 

And in the morning, he'd do it all again.

But that was before he _looked_. He looked and he saw the people in the cracks. He saw the scrawling on the walls. He met a girl - and a boy - and he slew a great beast. And after that, how could you go back to the old life? How could you smile on the phone and say _I'm sorry, we have lost your form, could you please resubmit it?_ How could you adjust your tie and sit amongst the masses, joining in their collective ignorance of the man screaming: 'THE END IS NIGH', when you'd met an angel (and he was a bit of a dick, all things told)?

The thing about interesting times was... it was like a drug. You got the buzz, and it lingered in your bloodstream. It made you ache and yearn. It made you hope for another high, another catastrophe, another miracle. You were changed. Your muscle-memory was shaped by it, your body didn't feel right without the ache of running.

Then, when you _were_ running, you cursed it, you hated it, you reviled it... but secretly you were _pleased_.

Like now. The Marquis was tossing the staff (it was important, apparently, the pole the sea-men revered, it was a totem of the Cloud-Cuckoo-Land) over the heads of the black, nothingness-monsters, and Richard was catching it, and scrambling up the wall in a flurry of scuffed toes and a memory of _trees_ and _summer_ and mis-spent youth. They were right in the belly of the beast, in the cob-webbed monstrosity of a pit. _The spiders aren't evil_ their guide had said. _They only want to help, but there are too many bugs in their web_. It went against the grain to _not_ fight spiders, but even rats were friends now, so he tried not to judge.

Door was holding open the portal, the connection to the lofty other-world place. Her beautiful face was made even more so by determination. The snarling, clawing cold absences were getting closer, grabbing at his ankles, scratching at his skin, and he threw up the golden pole to Door.

For a moment, it wasn't going to make it. The trajectory was there, an arc and a promise and a million shattered dreams. It would fall, and the empty spaces would pull him down and swallow him whole. He could feel the lurch in his stomach, the way his body flinched. But then - oh then - she stooped and caught it, and flung up the antenna through the portal she'd opened. The creatures cried out in agony and frustration, and a bright light flooded the room, banishing them from sight.

There they were. Resplendent in all their glory: Sub lieutenant. Lieutenant. Commander. Captain. Each man bore bars on his wrists, and they saluted all at once.

"Ma'am," they said.

"At ease," Door replied, and she let go of the pole and slid back down. 

The Marquis had - at some point - slipped to her other side, and there they were. The three of them triumphant, again. "It's good to see you," he said. "We thought you were long gone."

"Oh no," the Captain said. "Semper fi."

But when Richard tilted his head to the side, he was sure he saw two letters smudged out on their insignia, somewhere in the middle: wi-.

"Thank you for opening the conduit to the Cloud," the Captain said. "Now we'll be able to trade information freely with all of Below."

"Oh, it was nothing," Richard replied, brushing it off.

"Don't say that," de Carabas hissed. 

But Richard knew the truth. For a chance to run around like lunatics with Door and himself? The Marquis would have accepted even a whisper of a gift.

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to my beta, who knows who she is :)


End file.
